


Frustratingly Idiotic (Incredibly Captivating)

by LucianQTaliesin



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Dimension (mentioned), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I hate him and I hate his stupid gauntlet, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspired By Tumblr, Not sure if I need the Violence warning but I've added it anyway, Other, Possibly triggering content has been summarised in end notes so it can be avoided, Rassilon (Doctor Who) is a Dick, The Master Has Issues, They're canon back where Dhawan!Master is from, Thoschei are unhealthily codependent in their universe, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24378616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucianQTaliesin/pseuds/LucianQTaliesin
Summary: "Now, he can taste a new dimension on his tongue, so different and so similar to his own.And it feels so right."-----His Doctor is dead. The Master flees from his universe. This is the aftermath.
Relationships: Other Variations of the two of them, Tenth Doctor/The Master (Simm), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	Frustratingly Idiotic (Incredibly Captivating)

**Author's Note:**

> This has literally been sitting in my Google Docs since a day after episode 1 aired. It's sure as hell not complete, but I'm stuck so I thought I'd cut off at a decent point and post what I have so far. It'll be of interest to someone.... I hope.
> 
> Inspired by a post by @uozlulu on tumblr. This is clearly AU from before episode 1 of series 12.
> 
> TW: Torture. It's not really graphic, but it's described enough to warrant calling it torture. It's in the italicised paragraphs between line breaks, if you want the basics of what's going on without reading, I've put it in the end notes.

He isn’t exactly sure how long it is he has been drifting before he ends up in another universe. More than a week. Less than a century. Maybe. His calculations before the trip were guesses, more than anything, just to give himself hope that journeying through the void isn’t  _ completely  _ pointless - not that staying was any better after— 

The damage to his TARDIS is repairable, anyway, even if she is hurt and angry at him for just  _ considering  _ the flight between universes (once they arrive, she kicks him out, shuts the doors in his face and sulks for a week, leaving him clueless about where he is until his senses reset a few days later). She settles afterwards, that’s what matters. Now, he can taste a new dimension on his tongue, so different and so similar to his own. 

And it feels so  _ right _ . 

* * *

The first thing he notices after recalibrating the TARDIS’ sensors is that Time here is different. At home, artron energy saturated almost every corner of every galaxy, Time Lords loathe to let even a moment slip out their tight control. Gallifrey was a silent, secret commander, though a few, like himself, had learnt to escape their hold. Here, Gallifrey is missing from history. Not entirely — there are enough references to it buried deep that he’s certain that it was here once — but somehow, it had vanished, along with everyone who lived there, except…

His hearts skip a beat.  _ There.  _ A TARDIS and her pilot. Appearing throughout time and space as little more than a legend, a hero in a blue box, had their own little pet planet to save. The Master grins.

He’s going by that  _ ridiculous  _ moniker here, too.

_ Hello, Doctor. _

* * *

After he watches this universe’s Master face off his future regeneration, Missy - nice, that; he’s never been a woman before - he can’t help but be grateful for the opportunity his alternate self’s death brings him. This Doctor hadn’t actually seen it happen, so he didn’t  _ know  _ whether Missy had regenerated or not, surely there isn’t much risk if— 

Well. He’s getting ahead of himself.

_ (But it’s Theta.) _

Who is he kidding? Getting ahead of himself is exactly what he should be doing.

  
  


It’s easy to figure out the best place to settle: he looks for chaos. Theta may have always thought Koschei the crazier of the two back then, but the smallest glimpse at the Doctor’s timestream says otherwise. Madness and mayhem follow in his wake, war and bloodshed shattering into a peace that’s so  _ him  _ it’s a miracle he’s still alive and not tracked down to the end of the universe (his counterpart had tried, but the Master is different to him; he  _ will  _ do better).

Earth, with their cute little agencies and governments, carry on trying to hold on to him as well, their failsafe for when their pitiful attempts to protect their planet aren’t good enough, as if Theta is  _ theirs  _ to keep, as if they have the  _ right  _ to ask him for a thing. (He burns when he gets a hold of Torchwood’s files on the Doctor. Yvonne Hartman is lucky she’s already dead.)(He laughs when he sees the title  _ President of Earth  _ in UNIT’s records. It’s so… human to just rely on the Doctor to save them.)

Slowly, between the TARDIS and all the accounts people had made over thousands of years, he begins to piece together what he can about this Doctor’s lifetime. If there has ever been one consistency between the dimensions, it’s the Doctor. Different times, maybe, different places, but he was, he is, always will be the centre of the universe. Always so desperate to put himself on the line for lives so below him, so stupidly humble and so brilliant, so frustratingly  _ idiotic  _ and yet so incredibly captivating. 

Once he’s compiled all the information he can find — and this feels like scheming for one of his traps, but he’s  _ not,  _ this one is more important — he searches for opportunity. He often dreads playing the long game, but he wants to  _ know  _ this Doctor, and in this case he doesn’t mind waiting for the payoff. Eventually, he settles upon one of the little human organisations the Doctor seems to love to help so much, and sees an opportunity in an MI6 agent who apparently keeps in touch with the Doctor long after they first meet. It’s only after he ambushes the agent on his first day of work (and tissue compression, what a classic) that he realises the paradox of the situation - oh, the joys of time travel - but he can’t find it in himself to care. This is the confusion he loves, and there’s so much to plan.

So he waits. The Master knows, intellectually, it’ll at most be a few weeks until he gets to meet the Doctor, but his body doesn’t seem to get the message; his fingers shake and he crackles with boundless energy and everything is too little and not enough all at once. And then— 

_ (—don’t die on me now _

_ —rassilon it’s not his fault _

_ —let me take his place i’m begging you _

_ —you’ll kill him! _

_ —i’ll do anything _

_ please) _

“Are you… alright?”

And  _ then,  _ the Doctor is there and he can’t breathe. It’s one of his later faces, Scottish and grey-haired and awkward, but the Doctor all the same. His perfectly crafted plans almost collapse in smoke but he holds on to them tight. The small smile the Master gives is one he’s practised for this moment, but forcing it on his face is still a struggle. He digs his nails into his palm, hard, and his hearts beat again. 

In the end, he survives the rest of the day without sobbing or screaming or laughing, and once they solve the mystery, it seems as though O - a simple code name, but one he loves the potential for - managed to impress the Doctor. O hands him a phone with a request to keep in touch, and though the Doctor seems reluctant, he takes it. 

* * *

_Considering he hasn’t even touched the boundaries of Kasterborous in years, the Master has no idea how Rassilon finds him. But he supposes the ‘how’_ _doesn’t matter, when he’s cuffed and can barely move from his position on his knees without pulling at the chains around his neck. Ironically, he thinks this is something he would have found himself doing to someone in a timeline where the Doctor hadn’t found him first._

_ Rassilon’s still wielding that gauntlet of his. He makes a point of removing three of the Master’s future regenerations, one at a time, just to prove the gauntlet can. Living feels wrong after that. He prays that the Doctor works out that this is a trap for him, and doesn’t come running in with half a plan like he always does.  _

* * *

  
  


The texts start simple. O sends MI6 case files that seem outside the norm, the Doctor replies with an answer or a clue and he pretends to solve it. After a while, the Doctor starts to include tales from his travels when he gives him the answer, and O responds with appropriately human awe. He can pinpoint the line that cements his trust: 

_ Living for so long, I can’t even imagine it. People around you living a whole life, while only a fraction of yours goes by. I’m sorry. _

And there’s silence for a day or two, followed by a simple  _ thank you,  _ and the Master smiles wider than he has in years. Eventually, their messages morph into something personal, and yet strangely casual, and it reminds him of the academy, of Koschei’s conversations with Theta full of hidden, secret meanings only the two of them would understand.

_ btw,  _ the Doctor sends one day, and he's immediately suspicious at the acronym,  _ i’ll look different next time you see me _

He's confused for a second, then it clicks. Regeneration. And when the Master receives a photo of a blonde woman waving at the camera next, he has to wonder how this went so well, how he got her trust so fast. 

He gives himself time to get used to this new doctor before he continues with his plan. This new Doctor… she's still so frustratingly idiotic and incredibly captivating, simultaneously younger and older, openly affectionate but less open. She calls her new humans  _ fam, _ ends a conversation with  _ -kisses!  _ and it's horrifically endearing. He's relieved the next part of his plan involves going off the grid because he's becoming desperate let her know who she's talking to.

* * *

_ He doesn’t know how long the Doctor holds out before he relents and retreats to Gallifrey. Rassilon had found a way to hijack their link, forcing memories of the Master’s torture through his head to him, and he can’t figure whether he should be glad the Doctor isn’t receiving those images half a universe away anymore, when that means he’s here on Gallifrey looking for him. Rassilon still fumes whenever he comes to him, but doesn’t try to force the memories through, so he knows he hasn’t been found yet. Sometimes, he curses the fact they’re no longer enemies, that he ever let the Doctor step into his TARDIS.  _

_ Then he thinks of the Doctor being in his place, and that shuts him up. _

* * *

Getting C to fire him is easy, since the man has an ego larger than the pompous building housing it, and the slightest insult riles him up. He takes his TARDIS to Australia and changes the exterior to a style that would fit O - why the Doctor left herself with a faulty chameleon circuit, he has no idea - and then sets up the bait. 

He can admit the Doctor probably wouldn't approve of his methods, but when has she ever? They're a mess of conflicting opinions and decisions, but that's what's so great about them. So a couple of secret agents die, and he recodes their DNA; no one  _ important  _ was hurt. The ‘aliens’ that turn up are a mix of light show, teleporter, and some masking technology to pique the Doctor’s curiosity, and when she leaves him a voicemail the Master has to force himself to stay calm, sending a message in disguise in return (he can’t resist it; it won’t be long until she knows who he is, anyway). C gets shot in the back of the head — unbelievably therapeutic, the man was so irritating — and then he’s sitting in front of his ‘house’ with a couple of Australian agents he hijacked for the cover and she’s stepping out of her own TARDIS that still makes that wonderful noise— 

“Say hello to the Doctor.”

—and he smiles. Grins a little, as he gives the excuse for the name  _ O  _ and she gives a delig-horrible little laugh, unintentionally insults the agents and strides into his house with a determination that’s almost charming. The inside of his TARDIS is a mess, which she doesn’t hesitate to mention, and he goes through the motions of his plan with just enough effort to be convincing because he can’t  _ focus  _ when the Doctor’s there in front of him, looking at him with a fondness that reminds him of his own Theta before everything. And after his aliens have appeared and they’ve made their strategic retreat, it’s hard not to notice once again how similar they are, the obsession both Doctor’s have with solving the mysteries of the universe and protecting their little planets.

Then all three of her pet humans are there. Compared to some of the previous ones, these seem to know nothing about her apart from what they’ve seen with their own eyes, and he’s both annoyed and relieved when the Doctor interrupts his attempt to tell Graham a little. The childlike trust they have in her is pathetic and he’s desperate to break it, but he objects to anyone knowing even a fraction of what he does. The Doctor is  _ his. _

* * *

_ There are days in the void that the Master thinks he’s going insane, as if the regeneration energy Rassilon had bled out of him is still leaving his body, as if his mind is still being torn apart by his telepaths. He often finds himself on the floor of the TARDIS console room with her blasting noise in his ear to break him from nightmares’ holds. Sometimes he sees Theta still there in the corners of his eyes, and he’s almost happy to ignore that he’s not real if it means he gets him back for a moment. If it means he’d never given him his energy. The TARDIS shocks him out of that too, though he can feel her mourning alongside him. Other times, he rages at the Doctor’s stupidity, and the regret that they should have remained enemies returns. _

_ Insanity begins to grip him. Maybe it already has, and he’s too far gone to notice. _

**Author's Note:**

> Summary of the possibly triggering stuff: The Time Lords in the Master's universe are Assholes, so that Doctor and the Master ally. The Doctor causes chaos (as usual), and when the Master is near Kasterborous, he's taken hostage by Rassilon as bait for the Doctor. Rassilon tortures the Master, removes some of his regenerations, and sends memories of it to the Doc through their telepathic link. After the Doctor finally returns to Gallifrey, I've not shown what happens yet, but later on I've mentioned the Doctor giving the Master regeneration energy and his death. The Master thinks he's going insane, cause he's not dealing with it well. That's pretty much everything.
> 
> Thanks for reading so far, I hope you enjoyed it :) I don't know when the rest will be written, but please subscribe if you wanna see more! Kudos and comments always appreciated, and you can find me on most social media as Onnadhiel


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